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PA G E 3 PA G E 4
'Advertising Superstar' Teaches
at VCU Adcenter
Women's Health
Surgeons Publish Book on Nutritional
Support for Cancer, Transplant Patients
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PA G E 5
2001 Conference
Research@VCU Women & Wellness IPage 3
Permit No. 889
Richmond, VlrgInII
March 5, 2001 UniverCity News Vol. 29 No . 14
Presidential
Communication
to VCU, VCUHS
Editor's Note: The following is the Febru­ary
28 message sent electronically to all
veu faculty and staffby President Eugene
P Trani, Ph.D. The president will prooide
the university and health system communi­ties
with updates regarding General
Assembly 2001 budget deoelopments as
information becomes available. Nhas been widely reported, the Gen­eral
Assembly failed to reach a bud­et
accord during the 2001 session.
As a result, the 2000-02 state budget, which
was passed last year, remains in place. Since
that time, however, state revenue growth has
slowed, resulting in a projected budget
shortfall. According to the Governor's Chief
of Staff, Mr. M. Boyd Marcus, Jr., statebud­get
expenditures could exceed revenues by
$421 million by July 1, 2002.
On February 24,2001, the Governor
issued Executive Order Number Seventy­Four
to ensure that actual expenditures in
this fiscal year and the next not exceed esti­mated
revenues. This Executive Order
requires state agencies, including higher
education institutions, to submit plans out­lirring
the means by which targeted savings
See BUDGET page 3
Dental Researchers Develop
Simulation for Students
System Mimics 'Interaction
With Real Patients
Engineer to Address
Bioelectronic Detection
Guiseppi-Elie to Speak
at BLOCHlPS 2001
Telemedicine Jump
Grants to Date
$85,.uiS,268
See the Research@ YCU secUon for
detaIled list of grants and awardees.
/ '
Governor Recognizes Two
VCU Faculty as Outstanding
Jena, Urban Selected
from 85 Nominees
Representing 36 Institutions
by Donna C. Gr ego r y
University News Services During a Feb. 16 ceremony at the
Capitol, two Virginia Common­wealth
University faculty members
ranked among 11 individuals recognized as
the year's best professors in VIrginia. Gov. Jim
Gilmore presented 2001 Outstanding Fac­ulty
Awards - the state's highest honor for
faculty at public and private colleges and uni­versities
- to VCU's Purusottam Jena, Ph.D.,
professor of phYSiCS, and David J. Urban,
Ph.D., associate professor of marketing.
Praised by stu­dents
and facul­ty
alike, J ena is
recognized as
one of the most
prolif i c
researchers in
the country. His
,tudies on atom­ic
clusters led to
his election last
year as a fellow
of the American
Physical Society.
"I am hon­ored
to receive
the Outstand­ing
Faculty
Award from the
"I am delighted to recognize these dis­State
Council
tinguished faculty members of Virginia's col­leges
and universities for their demonstrated
excellence in teaching, research and public
service," Gilmore said.
Jena and Urban were selected from 85
nominees representing 36 institutions. The
awards program is coordinated by the State
Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
of Higher Education. This could have gone
to any number of my colleagues who, like
me, do what they enjoy the most - teach
our students and hope to be a positive influ­ence
in their lives," Jena said.
number one in the number of awards
received. He is a two-time winner of the
VCU School of Business Distinguished
Teaching Award.
"I am proud to represent VCU as a
recipient of the SCHEY Outstanding Fac­ulty
Award. I am also pleased to be includ­ed
in such a distinguished group of honorees
Jena, a faculty member since 1980, has from the other schools in the common
received two ofVCU's top academic awards.
Urban, who joined veu in 1989, has
been nationally recognized on several occa­sions
for his teaching talents. In 1998, an
American Marketing Association survey of
teaching-award recipients ranked Urban See FACULTY page 2
Telemedicine Assists VCU
Surgical Relief Team
by Erin Lucero
University News Services W:th the help oftelemed­icine,
a surgical relief
team from Virginia
Commonwealth University will
have a long-lasting impact on the
African country of Kenya. In early
February, a 14-member surgical
team from VCU traveled more than
19 hours to reach Mombasa, a
coastal town on the southeastern tip
of Kenya situated along the Indian
Ocean. The team traveled to the
third-world country representing
Operation Helping Hands.
The non-profit organization is
headed by Timothy Broderick,
M. D., a general and trauma sur­geon
at VCU's Medical College of
Virginia Hospitals, and Michael
Aboutanos, M.D., a fonner VCU
resident in general surgery.
Aboutana; is cwrently doing his fel­lowship
at the University of Mary­land
Shock Trauma Center and is
affiliated with the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
'The contrast between Mom­basa's
beautiful countryside, the
shanty towns that make up the city
and the concentrated human suf­fering
that filled the hospital was
unbelievable," said Broderick '1 saw
illness like I've never seen it before
- the hospital's wards are open to
outside air and to flies; patients'
dressings aren't cllanged regularly
and they have no pain medication
even for patients who've suffered
bums over more than 50 percent
of their body"
Mombasa's Coast Provincial
General Hospital is the second
See TELEMEDICINE page 5
High-School
Robotics Competition
to Hit Richmond
Event Sponsored by VGU School of Engineering,
NASA Langley
by Mary Beth Alfo r d
University News Services Alfter just six weeks of planning and construction efforts, thou­sands
of eager high-school students and engineers will
aunch their self-designed robots into metal-to-metal com­petition
March 9-10 at Virginia Commonwealth University's Stu­art
C. Siegel Center.
Seventy high-school teams from 12 states, Puerto Rico and
Brazil will compete in the NASA LangleyNCU School of Engi­neering
FIRST (For Inspiration and ReCOgnition of Science and
Technology) Regional Robotics Competition. Richmond is one
ofl3 U.S. regional event sites, which will draw a total of525 teanis.
'We look forward to holding our largest robotics event yet at
VCU - more than doubling since last year," said Robert Mattauch,
Ph.D., dean of engineering. "The competition gives the universi­See
ROBOTICS page 2